Nor would the deal have stopped disciplinary proceedings against individual officers. For both sides, a hugely costly, fractious and distracting couple of years lie ahead.Yet the voluntary solution was always in truth a non-starter. The FSA insists that the industry would have been able to walk away from signing such a deal without any admission of guilt. The City regulator’s attempt to persuade 21 fund managers and brokers caught up in the split capital investment trusts d?cle voluntarily to cough up £350m in compensation finally fell apart at the seams yesterday.

The opportunity for an industry-wide solution has now been withdrawn, and while the door remains open for mediation on an individual basis, it is already plain that a sizeable portion of the 21 plans to face down the regulator through lengthy enforcement and disciplinary procedures.
In the FSA’s opinion, this will eventually end up costing the industry far more than if it had gone the voluntary route, the more so as the ringleaders in the rebellion can expect double punishment for their lack of co-operation Like naughty schoolboys, detention is no longer an option They are to be caned for their obstinacy as well. The Financial Services Authority has threatened them, cajoled them, pleaded with them, even begged them, but all to no avail. Something else will happen: maybe a technical advance that we cannot at the moment predict. Meanwhile, remember how bad the world has been at managing its energy needs.

We almost need another oil shock to encourage us to be wiser.. And I am twitchy that the 30 per cent odds noted here may be a touch too low.Those straight-line projections for US petroleum demand cannot really be right, can they? It is just too dangerous for any country to be so reliant on imports from what is arguably the most volatile region in the world. So while there are decent reasons to believe that we will get through this cycle all right, there are equally good reasons that we won’t get through the next one without another true energy crisis.That is on the balance of probability. My own very rough and ready expectation is that there is only a 30 per cent chance that this economic cycle will be brought to an end by an oil shock. There are other things that will go wrong instead – what these might be is another column. But it is an odds-on chance that the next cycle after this one, when it comes, will indeed be ended by an oil shock.